For You Review

The credit line is the headline: produced, arranged, composed and performed by one person, twenty seven instruments, at nineteen years old, after negotiating creative control out of a major label that had never given it to a new artist. As a feat it is genuine. As a record it is polite. The songs are soft focus late seventies soul with stacked falsetto harmonies and clean guitar, competently written and interchangeable with a dozen other releases from that year.

Soft and Wet is the only track with any edge, and even there the edge is in the title rather than the arrangement. I'm Yours closes with a rock guitar solo that hints at the range he would later use, and the title track is a multi tracked vocal exercise that took a reported forty six overdubs to make and lasts under a minute. What is missing is the thing that arrived two albums later: a point of view. Impressive homework from someone about to start writing.